I am going to use the same Pythagorean win expectations I used to determine who would be the best First Round opponent for the Caps. Now in that article I didn’t even have Montreal as an option because I am of the mindset that hockey should only be played in Excel and not on the ice. But since they somehow made it as the 8th seed, here are the Caps win expectations against them:

Caps should win 72.1% of the time at home and 59.9% of the time on the road versus the Habs.

When I run this through a 10,000 season simulator I come up with the Caps having a 83.5% chance at advancing to the second round. Significantly less than Puck Probabilities’ probability (say that three times fast. I dare you.), but still healthy enough to call my local bookie.

That’s the good news.

The “bad” news is that there is still a 36.6% chance this goes to 7 games. So think about THAT <cough>Peter <cough> before you shave your #beardpact again.